Thursday, March 17, 2016

Marked in Flesh (The Others #4) by Anne Bishop

Things now rest on the knife edge, the Humans First and
Last Movement is growing in power and popularity, attacking humans who don’t
support them and continually provoking the Terra Indegene

And they may have gone too far – and they have no idea
what mighty powers they have raised against them

This book is all about surviving, hoping for the best and
preparing for the aftermath. It’s not even about trying to make it less bad –
it’s past that – it’s all about getting ready to pick up the pieces.Wverything
heading to a bad place and everyone is just trying to soften the blow. There’s
no doubt here, the worry that has been brewing for several books has reached
its peak: it’s too late to stop the disaster, the elder Others have been roused
and people are going to die.

The Terra Indegene we know are not unscathed by this.
Simon, Henry, Vlad et all are all closely associated with the humans and one of
the repeated conflicts they face is the question of how much humanity is
allowed to remain. That doesn’t just mean how many humans are allowed to live –
but how many human things are allowed to remain, which is a conflict for them
as well as there’s a number of human things they themselves want to keep

Which also is a personal question for Simon in particular
as well – Terra Indgene are beings that imitate a predator and become more like
them (so wolfguard’s ancestors saw wolves and became increasingly wolfish) – as
he is more and more involved with humans how much of a human is he becoming?

Which also fits in part of the personal conflict with Meg
who has excellent storylines of being the Trailblazer, trying to find a new way
of living and surviving for the Cassandra Sangre like herself: trying to use
their power to predict the future without it killing them. There’s also the
personal story of her connection with Simon. Personally, I don’t think this
book needs a romance, and I appreciate, at least, that it has been a very slow
burn – but if it is going to be there it’s interesting some of the elements
that they’ve added. Meg has been abused – physically emotionally and sexually –
by human men; she actually views Simon’s increasing humanity as a threat and a
barrier

The conflict facing the human characters is how to
convince the ignorant and entitled Humans First and Last Movement demanding
more and more from the Others despite the repeated warnings they’ve received.
There’s lots of conflict of these humans desperately trying to placate the
Others and being victimised themselves for being “Wolf Lovers”. There’s a lot
of uncomfortable and difficult moments with the Others, especially the wolves,
being furious with humanity for just reasons and these humans being caught in
the middle, sympathising while also trying to point out some of them are trying
to stop this. It’s messy and has no good ending – which is kind of the
underlying theme of this book

All of these is bleak and grim but comes with a nice
heavy dose of humour as well which so defines this series. The joyous confusion
of the Others trying to understand humanity, especially The Meg. This light,
hilariously confusion is an excellent addition to ensure that everything isn’t
so grim.

The world building of this series is fascinating and
pretty unique. We have a lot of book series out there where the supernatural
hides out of fear of the vastness of humanity – but this is one of the few
where it is the opposite. The supernatural are vastly powerful who tolerate
humanity’s presence. This book also lets us see how this works in different
lands with the people of Cel-Romano giving gifts to their “friends in the
woods” which is a nice take on old superstitions of leaving gifts out to, for
example, the fae and other local supernaturals in different parts of Europe.

This book, this series, raises a lot of interesting
questions and points about what “using the land” means, especially when we
consider how truly frivolous a lot of our uses are. The Humans First and Last
Movement talk about exploiting natural resources which they say are being
“unused” but the Others point out, strongly, that the land is being used. It’s
being used by beings to live, for food, shelter – it’s their homes. And all
this talk of “proper use of land” is really exposed when you realise that part
of the land under-dispute is desired for gold – and can there be a better
skewering of “proper use of the land” when land used for food and water is torn
up for the sake of decorative metal?

The whole concept of the humans demanding the land of the
Others really skewers the ideas of entitlement we see a lot in politics, both
past and present. It addresses issues raging from colonisation to resource
exploitation. Only with the beings been invaded being vastly more powerful and
quite able to viciously oppose the entitlement. Which is actually some of the
problem.

This book is not set on Earth, but it is a clear Earth
Parallel – it even says as much in the explanatory notes. And Thasia is North
America. We’ve said before how this is extremely problematic because it’s also
a consentient that was completely uninhabited by humans before Europeans
arrive. This is an alternate world where Native Americans have been completely
removed.

But not only that, because the Terra Indigene – the
Others – beings with animalistic and elemental traits who are all connected to
the Earth and nature have not just been set up to occupy the continent instead,
but also seem to carry many of the stereotypes of Native Americans –
specifically the Native-American-crying-over-despoiled-wilderness cringeworthy
trope. This was never subtle in the books (which have a very strong
environmental message anyway as I mentioned above) but this book decided we
need to shovel it in – complete with a scene of humans killing vast numbers of
Bison wastefully, destroying food supplies for the Others. It’s an extremely
clumsy appropriation of actual historical events, all repeated while completely
excising the actual real life victims.

This links into how this series is dealing with things
like entitlement, colonisation etc because while it raises a lot of interesting
issues and exposes a lot of the terrible attitudes around these concepts, it
also completely strips out the victims, the damage and the pain that underpin
the true problems of these concepts in real life. In fact, since the power firmly
rests in the hands of the Others who can bring about extinction at any time, it
can even break it’s own message. Sure, when the Humans First and Last movement
is complaining that they don’t get gold and resources… but what about when they
talk about food and water shortages? What about the farmers complaining that
the land they have has uncertain and difficult. What about the Others
complaining about those immigrant upstart humans coming onto their land and
then over-breeding? Because weaker groups being confined to certain, often less
productive areas or powerful groups complaining about immigrants over-breeding
and needing “culling”? That also has parallels. And I don’t think we’re not
meant to see it this way, but the power disparity running the opposite way
doesn’t make the colonisation narrative fit perfectly.

We do have some POC in this book – the most prominent of
the “Police Pack” is Lieutenant Montgomery and probably the most important
human after The Meg: he’s also joined by his daughter and his mother Twyla who
is going to be a Force to be Reckoned with. I do think there is something of a
trope out there of the no-nonsense, not tolerating any silliness, determined
Black matriarch which Twyla fits in, though. Most of the rest of the cast is
White, and I think this covers the description of the Terra Indigene as well.

I don’t believe we have any overtly labelled disabled
characters per se, but the minds of the Cassandra Sange, the way they have to
make accommodations for their abilities, the worries about overstimulation, not
understanding their surroundings, anxiety and difficulty of communication
certainly lend themselves to a non-neurotypical narrative. There are no LGBT
characters in this series, sadly

This is one of those books and one of those series that I
love – completely and unabashedly love. The world setting is amazing, the
characters are excellent and hilarious. It’s original, the writing is excellent
and every moment of reading it is a complete and utter joy. We always look for
a new edition of the Meg and it always rockets to the top of our to read list
when a new book is released. We love this book series – but, no matter how much
we want to fanpoodle, there are problems here that have to be looked at.